Expert First Aid (skill level 225) allows you to use Heavy Runecloth Bandages, which heal an insane 2000 health over 8 seconds. Even for twinks, this means gaining a heal-to-full ability once a minute. You need to have a higher level medic actually make the bandages, but your twink isn’t your main.

Engineering or Fishing at 150 are required to gain the two universal head slot items: Green Tinted Goggles or the Lucky Fishing Hat. The Lucky Fishing Hat is a bit more difficult to get, as it requires you to fish in (but not win) the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, but the Goggles are an acceptable alternative until you can win it.

It goes without saying that both professions should be chosen and maxed out as early as possible. You can get started at level 5 and reach 150 at level 10. The gathering professions all convey excellent bonuses at this level, which they do not in the endgame. Amusingly enough, the professions that are worst for endgame raiders are best for twinks, which just goes to show balance is a tricky thing to achieve.

In addition to those skills, you will also want several stacks of the following consumables:

The Heavy Runecloth Bandages require someone with First Aid 280 to make, but the healing they return is awesome.

Rumsey Rum Black Label is the twink food buff of choice. The +15 Stamina boost translates into +150 health, or 10-15% increase. That’s insanely good. Consider that to have that kind of effectiveness on my level 80 Warlock, food buffs would have to grant at least +200 Stamina. So yes, this rum has quite a kick.

It costs 2s at the Southshore Inn in the Escape From Durnholde Keep instance in the Caverns of Time, and you should fill your bags with this drink. If you don’t have this up at all times I don’t know what to tell you.

Healing Potions should be a staple of every adventurer’s kit, twink or not. These aren’t as good as a bandage but can help out in a tight spot.

Because the Rumsey Rum overwrites any cooked food buff you might obtain, you don’t need anything but the standard vendor food and drink. I prefer Melon Juice and Dwarven Mild cheese, but it really doesn’t matter what you eat — you could have Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream, if that’s what your twinks like. If you find yourself in a position where you have the luxury to eat and drink in WSG, do so.

And yes, it’s good to have both available even if you don’t need mana. You will get a pug healer who forgets to bring something to drink.

(Who am I kidding? Explosive Sheep are like the best thing, EVER! Blow up sneaking rogues with sheep!)

I count a lot of the low level elixirs and potions, like the Elixirs of Minor Accuracy, Firepower, Strong Troll’s Blood, Defense, and Lesser Agility, in this category. They are all very good buffs, but which one you should stack depends on your class, role, and if you have a close personal relationship with an alchemist. Even then, because potions and elixrs don’t persist after death, keeping these buffs up can get expensive, fast.

One final type of consumables bear mention: temporary item enhancements, like Heavy Sharpening Stones, Heavy Weightstones, and Minor Wizard Oil. These add an additional enchantment (called an imbue) to your weapon that either increases your weapon damage or spellpower. This imbue lasts through death, so is worth keeping up throughout a match. The catch is that they can’t be used on heirloom weapons, some of which are really great weapons for twinks. If you aren’t using an heirloom weapon, you should have a few stacks of these items and macro their application into your buff sequence to make sure you don’t forget to apply it.

The final essental element to twinking is a good attitude, but that’s a post unto itself.

What about you? What items do you consider essential? Please let me know if I’ve missed something below in the comments.

7 responses to “Twink Essentials”

Psst! Cyn, over here! Gathering Professions can go up to 225 in the 19 twink bracket, not just 150!

Trading drinks is still a no-no I believe, unless they’re conjured water from your mage. Non conjured items still can’t be traded cross-server except for blue items that drop from bosses.

The big item you left off of the list, which is probably the most essential of all potions in the game, is the Speed Potion.

Every class can make use of it and while you might be throwing away mats on a buff elixir such as Troll’s Blood, the buff from a Speed Potion only lasts a matter of seconds anyway so you’re likely to get your money’s worth each time.

Whether your class has a speed buff themselves or not a speed pot can give you a much needed boost in almost any situation. Need to catch up to the EFC? Speed Pot! Got the flag yourself and need to outrun the enemy? Speed Pot! About to get your face owned? Speed Pot, LoS, Bandage!

Out of every buff potion in the game, Speed Potions are the only ones I keep in large quantity across all twinks. I make only one exception and that’s for my Rogues who will also have multiple stacks of Lion’s Strength and Agility potions for extra dps when I need them, but instead of running them constantly I make use of them when the situation calls for them.

The only other thing that comes to mind right off the bat is going to be setting your Hearthstone in Dalaran. There’s a lot of places that a twink needs to go in order to gather all of their gear or farm nodes for their professions, and wasting time with travel is not the way of the twink.

With a profession like Engineering you’ll also find Dalaran to be the best place for you to level the profession, especially if you have your main send all of the mats you’ll need via mail rather than keeping them stored in your twink’s bank slots. You can run from the mailbox to the forged/anvil then over to your trainer, then back to the mailbox and keep on in that triangle as much as you want. The anvil/forged is about 20 yards away from the nearest mailbox and 15 yards away from your engineering trainer.

*sigh* I was pretty sure that I’d missed something. Or, in this case, two somethings: my Herbalism on Cynwyn is still sadly 130, and all my speed pots are on my main. Why does my main need them? I don’t know. But I’ll fix that tonight.

I completely agree about leveling skills in Dalaran. I leveled my DK engineering to 450 there and the convenience of the forge, trainer, and mailbox cannot be beat. The addition of the engineering AH makes it all the better.

Also, the recent changes to Fishing have made it so you can apparently reach 450 skill at level 10. The waters of STV used to be moderately difficult to fish in, but with the level requirements removed and pools becoming easy for anyone to fish from, having maxed out fishing isn’t a requirement for the hat.

That said, you can level to 450 without leaving Dalaran. Just fish the fountain.

250 Fishing is all you need for the Fishing Hat to maximize your potential for catching it.

I’d go for the hat if it wasn’t so insanely boring to fish my way up to that level. I don’t like fishing in real life because of the boredom that often comes with it, and the same applies to the game.

I’ve gotten three twinks up to the required level for going after the hat and have done so many times, but I’ve still never found it. I’ve caught the fish for the boots that we can no longer use in the 19 bracket three times, but that obviously does me no good at all.

Hopefully the changes they’ve hinted at for fishing in Cat will make it interesting enough for me to get back into it. Until then I’ll stick to being a dwarven fisherman and using explosives instead.